Unless you’re a radio producer, the days of needing dedicated voice recorders are long behind us. Mobile phones and tablets have built-in microphones that are perfectly acceptable for private use in listening back on interviews, meetings, lectures, or random musings. And they even tend to do alright nowadays with music at concerts.

But to get good-quality audio, you still need to do some tweaking. And there are apps for that. I’ve searched high and low for the best advanced audio recording apps, all of which include powerful features that help you get the sound just right. If you only want to record quick voice memos, these will all be overkill, but for the professionals who need clear, crisp audio on a budget, they might be just the ticket.(more…)

Google Cloud Print is the cool beta service we all know and love for over-the-air printing. We’ve come to accept it as part of our day-to-day printing lives on our desktops but what about our Android phones and tablets? When do they get a turn?

In this roundup, we’re going to take a look at some of the Google Cloud Print-compatible apps available for Android so you can get printing literally wherever in the world you are. If you haven’t got Google Cloud Print setup or are left wondering what it actually does, be sure to check out Getting Started with Google Cloud Print on Tuts+.

One of the most obvious advantages that Android holds over its competitors is the ability to have complete control over your files rather than leaving it entirely to the system and individual apps to manage in the background. There’s a lot of choice in how you manage your files though, so we’re here to lend a hand.

In this roundup, we’re going to take a look at eight awesome options for file management on your Android device, all of which fit into Android’s modern look and feel. (more…)

Since its launch, the Play Store has received a lot of flak for being clunky and painful to use. There are scores of Android users out there who want to get the most out of their devices, and a big part of that is being able to find, track and buy the latest and greatest apps available. Thankfully, there are solutions out there for all our app-hunting and tracking needs, and today we’re looking at 10 of them that help us get our fix.

Spend any time using your phone or tablet and it’s hard to avoid using the keyboard. Whether knocking out a quick email or typing URLs into your browser, there’s a limit to what you can get done without having to type. And chances are that the keyboard baked into your copy of Android is nothing to write home about — there are few stock keyboards that really cut the mustard.

Sitting at my desktop or using my laptop, I’m a fairly accomplished typist — I’m probably not the fastest in the world, but I’m certainly faster than average. The same cannot really be said when I’m using my Android devices — touchscreens offer a completely different way of interacting with a device and it proves, on the most part, to be a slower form of typing. This is why I find myself on a constant mission to track down the perfect keyboard. If you’re on a similar quest, and whatever your preferred style of typing — one-handed, two-handed, gesture input, just a forefinger — this roundup of the pick of the crop should help you find a keyboard that suits you.

I’ve decided to move to London. I have no idea why — probably boredom. I just finished my end-of-year exams at college and have a whole summer to play with. The idea of moving country was fun until I decided to actually go ahead with it. Now it’s terrifying. Every morning I wake up, I remember I’m surrounded by 8 million people and that I know none of them. I have no family or friends in London. No job. Zero geographical knowledge. I’ve figured out the Oyster card though, so that’s good.

It’s dawned on me that my smartphone could be a good tool for getting around and avoiding awkward eye contact on the tube. So instead of researching bank accounts, national insurance numbers and other crucial information, I went on the Play store for apps to aid me in surviving my first few weeks in North London. Here they are.

Today, we’d like to push things a little further and make Android interact directly with your computer. We’ve handpicked a bunch of apps to remotely control or access your computer from your phone, stream content from your computer directly to your tablet or phone, and even use your Android device as an extra monitor.

Smartphones are great devices that let you listen to music, take photos, browse the web, save and share content, store various files, make lists and take notes, remember contact information and even save your passwords. While having intelligent devices in our pockets is great, sharing their content with computers is even better. Because computers are the most essential tool to most workers, and also because they have significantly bigger screens than phones, sharing content between our Android phones and tablets and computers makes sense.

One of the many things I like about Android is the vastness of its app ecosystem. If you want something specific to work on your phone, you can be sure there are dozens of apps to match your needs. While this is a good thing, it can also be problematic. Not all apps are created equal in the Android universe, and chances are some of them are sub-standard, outdated or even hold security threats for your data. Thankfully, there are apps made to actually help you look for more apps.(more…)

One of Android’s biggest strengths as a platform is its hackability. Being open source, the operating system enables users the freedom to tweak it and customize it in any way they want, way more than any other mobile OS out there. And no app has received more praise for being the tool of choice to mould Android in any way one wants, than Tasker. By combining an insane number of triggers, actions and related parameters, Tasker has for years now let us Android geeks make our phones our own, in every sense of the word.

Let’s face it though: as powerful as Tasker may be, it is quite the devil when it comes to usability. I didn’t say Android “geeks” above in any lesser way; the learning curve with Tasker is known to be pretty high. Scores of users have picked it up like children pick candy in a candy store, and then let go of it because they found it too bitter for their taste. Heck, even we, as a blog, haven’t succeeded in going beyond a coupleposts about it!

Fed up with not being able to take full advantage of Tasker, I recently set out to find what else Google Play had to offer that came close to its power. Here are the results.